dreams & nightmares
by tunnelOFdawn
Summary: Sasuke is full of hopes and dreams that will never be fulfilled. "Sensei, I can't see." A simple sentence condemns him.


When Sasuke wakes up, the world is a nightmare he cannot comprehend. Understanding slips through his fingers like traction on a stormy day. He almost wishes he could bash his head in and wake up—truly wake up and not this horrifying facsimile of reality. He is drifting on the edges of a dream and he cannot paddle back to the shore of reality.

There comes a wave of terrifying height, ready to choke him, ready to drown him. He breathes in and chokes on water. His lungs fill up with fluid. He wants to cough it all out, as if vicious movement could drag him out of the cesspool of this murky despair. He coughs it up only to face reality. Chest compressions crack his ribs and he wishes they would collapse a lung, spear his heart with his own bones. He can stomach the betrayal of his body, but not that of others.

Sasuke is full of hopes and dreams that will never be fulfilled.

"Sensei, I can't see."

A simple sentence condemns him.

He wants to rage against the world.

An impenetrable darkness comprises his new world. There is no light, only a blackness so complete that it terrifies him. Foolish of him, perhaps, but he had thought he was beyond primal terror by now. He had thought that he was no longer at the mercy of his emotions. He had thought he could finally _live_. His story had ended and he thought—well, he thought a lot of things. It was foolish of him to hope.

There is a gaping emptiness in his eye sockets. He wants to fill it up with something, with _anything_. How shameful that he exists as an eyeless Uchiha, devoid of the vaunted kekkei genkai that spans the timeline of their world, of their history. Were that he still asleep. To wake up like this is an unimaginable punishment.

A man with bandages lingers in the vestiges of his mind. It makes no difference. All investigations and claims are stonewalled. There is no subtlety to it. It does not matter. In the grand scheme of things, his value is nil without those eyes of his. He is just a boy now with too much anger to elicit any form of sympathy. Yes, he is still a Uchiha, but now it is preceded by "eyeless". Sasuke Uchiha, the Eyeless Uchiha. The heir and survivor of a dead clan. What a grand title he now totes around. It weighs him down. He wonders how Rock Lee managed to get through life with weights on his ankles for so long.

If only he could fall back asleep. Slumber drags down his eyelids over empty sockets. His mind rebels against sleep. Wailing klaxons scream danger, danger in the pit of his chest. They'll pluck the heart right out of his chest and stuff his mouth with cotton.

Nobody reassures him.

He has nobody left to reassure him.

Alienation creates a world of his own making—a world that incites the faintest twinges of regret. He cannot stumble upon this realization. Once he realizes, his world will collapse—all structural integrity nothing but a mockery of all that is stable and just. He cannot abide by the thought of acknowledging that his life is a fiction formed by the powerful. I am the main character, he wants to yell. This story should be mine. Without me, what sort of world exists? You cannot take away my existence. I still live.

He cannot abide by the tears that escape him. His eyes are gone and he wishes his tear ducts were also gone. Crying is the domain of the weak. He cannot abide by weakness.

Naruto's hands hover over Sasuke. The wildfire feel of his chakra raises hair on skin. He cannot see Naruto but he perceives the brightness of his form in the heat that creeps into his skin.

"Oi! Time to stop moping around, teme!" Naruto yells. It is a comforting bit of familiarity marred by the absence of Naruto's hands on skin. Usually, he punctuate his words with a friendly shove or some sort of action but now, his hands hang suspended in the air. Sasuke has been demoted from capable shinobi comrade to shattered glass figurine.

Naruto is clumsy. He does not how to navigate the tides of love without unfurling all his sails for full speed. So, he abstains.

Sasuke had always been picture-perfect. His clear and pale skin holds no scars from ill-use. His eyes had been finely cut onyx—precious for more than the sharingan. The arch of his cheekbones and the long line of his slender neck have all the hallmarks of a finely detailed doll.

Naruto looks at Sasuke and finds him wanting, Sasuke knows. He hears it in the hitch of his breath as he hovers nearby like a malingering phantasm. Naruto does not know how to be gentle with the things he loves. Sasuke can almost imagine the plaintive looks Naruto directs at Kakashi.

Kakashi is silent. There are no encouraging words from him. Just a confirmation of his blindness has all that has been exchanged between them. Sasuke cannot begrudge him that. He can afford him leniency. He has plenty of time now for that. They always knew sensei wasn't a pillar of emotional stability. He is as wrong as they are.

"Oh, Sasuke," Sakura breathes out. There is a world of pain in her voice. Her hand reaches out and rests on his arm. Sasuke flinches away. He cannot bear her touching him—touching him like _this_. He cannot abide by the thought of her pity. Sakura, who had admired and adored him, now pities him. How funny. He used to find her crush annoying. Now, he yearns for those days—that unthinking adoration and her appreciation of his well-honed body and mind.

"You can't sleep away the world," Kakashi murmurs. Experience lends a wry tone to his voice. Sasuke can hear the smile in his voice. It's a terrible sound. He listens to the soft exhalation of laughter that escapes Kakashi. Sasuke does not want to think of another man's pain when his own pain consumes him so thoroughly. He does not have room for more emotion. Spread thin with sorrow, Sasuke loses opacity with every day that passes by. There is a heaviness to his movements that contradicts the weightless evaporation of his form.

He could waste away and nobody would notice.

Sasuke dreams of Itachi—the only sight he'll experience now. Coldness climbs up his skin, raising hair on skin. Sasuke watches Itachi through the rolling fog. "Nii-san," he whispers. His voice is the high pitch of youth. It echoes strangely in this dream of his. He wants to wake up. He does not want to dredge up the emotions of his youth.

"Otouto," Itachi whispers, "what have you done with my eyes?" Blood carves trails down his cheeks. His eye sockets are empty. A maggot wriggles out of the left eye socket. It shows more movement than Itachi, still and silent.

A clock ticks by in the background. There is no rhythm. None that Sasuke can discern as one after another, maggots crawl out of Itachi's eye sockets. They slide wetly down the slope of his cheeks. With a soft squelch, they blanket the ground. An undulating mass of beige move as one towards Sasuke. The fog does not hide them. It only draws more focus in the contrast of the haze versus this mass.

Sasuke gropes at his own face. There are eyes in his sockets. They fit perfectly.

Those maggots are coming for him, he knows for certain. They are smooth against his bare skin. He is naked except for the creep of maggots up his legs. They move slow like a leaky faucet dripping one droplet after another. He could drown on them. They could suffocate him like too much waste in a sink's drain.

"Oh, Sasuke," Mother says. She lumbers out of the shadows. She has no skin. Beauty is skin-deep but Sasuke cannot help but find her form alluring. He cannot look away. Her viscera shine wetly in the moonlight. The tides of her viscera are barely held back by the sandbar of her bones.

Mother's hand reaches out with a wet shine to her long fingers. Muscle and bone work in tandem—flexing and contracting in a hypnotic movement. Her hand cradles the curve of Sasuke's cheek. He leans in. A soft breath escapes him. Mother does not breathe. She only exists. It must be nice to only exist. Living is such a trial. He is tired.

"Kaa-san," Sasuke says. The syllables are so few that they drop from his mouth as heavily as stones from a roof. The impact they leave is etched into Mother's beating heart. It pulses through the wreckage of her chest. He can hear the thump of her pulse. He could reach out a hand and cradle her heart, if he so wished. His hand reaches out in a slow motion. Fear of rejection embeds itself into the shake of his muscles.

When Sasuke was a boy in need of comfort, he used to lay his head on his mother's breast. Her heartbeat, a comforting rhythm. He used to be lulled into calmness by the beat of her heart. Her hands would rake through his hair. He had always had a sensitive scalp. The lightest graze would leave him liquid with relaxation. Now, he has no nobody to embrace him. Just pain as they tug at him unendingly.

"What have you done to your brother?" Mother says. Her hand claws into the curve of his cheek. Nails turn needle-sharp and cut a long laceration from cheekbone to jaw. Sasuke gasps seconds later. He chokes on the breath in his chest.

"It wasn't my fault," Sasuke lies. He wishes it were true. It is hard to lie to yourself for long. The truth hurts. An emptiness expands in his chest and suffocates the beat of his heart. Sluggish, he listens to the dull beating of his heart.

"You cry so well," Mother comments. Sasuke touches his own face. Liquid meets his fingers. It pours endlessly out of him. It should run out. His tears do not seem finite. A sorrow's infinity stretches before him. Years of clumsy repression mete out long-awaited justice.

In the midst of his contemplation, Mother leans in close. She pecks his forehead and leans her forehead against his for a moment. Then, she draws back and her hands become claws. Mid-blink, they pierce through the thin skin of his eyelids and scoop out his eyeballs. How funny that he must blink in a dream. The transience of time so carefully embodied in the lightning strike of movement.

He yells.

"Your eyes are wasted on a boy like you," Father says. He coalesces out of the gloom of fog. He has no eyes. There is only the fog in his sockets. They fill him up. There is something swirling beneath his skin. His skin is so thinly stretched that he can see the fog. His father is the fog on the edge of dreams.

They fade away, like they always do. His family is a dream that cannot manifest. They are only corpses burnt to ash after they've been picked clean. If only he kept a bone or two in his possession, so that he may hold it close to his heart. Sasuke is sentimental when it comes to family. He let them consume him. He refashioned himself to suit them and their vengeance.

"Come back," Sasuke says. He stares at his hands within this dream. He is acutely aware that this is a dream—a nightmare at its end. The world is hazy, on the edge of unreality. The dissolution of his form happens slowly. An odd, swooping sensation overcomes him, as if he is falling endlessly.

Sasuke wakes up. There is only sterile silence to greet him. He is alone. So accustomed to a simmering anger, the warmth of sadness surprises him. It's a lukewarm lethargy flushing cheeks and pricking tear ducts. He does not want to move out of his bed, as uncomfortable as it may be.

He wants to fall asleep.


End file.
